Published on a satirical website, an article with the headline: “Biden to Defund the Department of Veterans Affairs” has received thousands of interactions on Facebook, some of which come from users taking the claim seriously. Though intended as a parody, links to the article have been shared out of context and have misled people to falsely believe that U.S. President Joe Biden is seeking to defund the department.
The article itself, available here , was published on the website “America’s Last Line of Defense,” which describe itself (here) as part of a “network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News.”
The page also states that “everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.” Other websites within the America’s Last Line of Defense network include DailyWorldUpdate.us , BustaTroll.org and TatersGonnaTate.com .
Examples of posts sharing the link to the satirical Biden story can be found here , here and here .
Comments indicating that some users are taking the claim seriously include “It’s about time to DEFUND BIDEN!” and “Fuck this POS, and the rest of the communist pigs!!” (here) as well as “He is so destructive…..seriously democrats,” “Military law needs to get involved to save america,” and “Who voted for this son of a bitch????? Come on speak up be proud. Wow” (here).
President Biden has not expressed any intentions to decrease funding to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. A page on his presidential campaign website (joebiden.com/veterans/) outlines his plans to “restore the VA as the premier agency for ensuring our veterans’ overall.”
Though the president’s proposed federal budget for Fiscal Year 2022 is not yet available, it is expected to appear www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/ soon.
VERDICT
Satire. Though intended as satire, an article with a headline stating that Biden has plans to defund the Department of Veterans Affairs has been taken seriously by some social media users. Biden has not announced any plans to do so.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Read More: Fact check: Claim that Biden will defund the Department of Veterans Affairs was